This work is based upon a Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Letters of the University
of Allahabad in 1931 and approved by a Board of Examiners comprising of Sir George A. Grierson,
Professors R. L. Turner, Jules Bloch, S. K. Chatterji and Dr. A. C. Woolner. It was hoped that the
University of Allahabad would publish it but owing to financial stringency the then
Vice-Chancellor, in spite of his wishes could not find funds for it. In the circumstances was kind
of The Indian Press, Ltd., to agree to print and publish it.

Tie main additions to the thesis are (a) the origin of sounds in Part I, (b) the appendices giving
unpublished texts of Early and Modern Awadhi, (c) the index of words, and (d) the map. I hope
these will prove useful. The transliteration alphabet of the international Phonetic Association
has been adopted for transcribing such modern languages as I know intimately and that of the Royal
Asiatic Society for the rest. The current abbreviations found in works of Linguistics have been
used in this book also.

It remains for me now to acknowledge my gratitude to those who helped me in the preparation of
this work. My revered gum 0Professor R. L. Turner planned this work for me in 1921 at Benares and
supervised its completion. I received my first and last lessons in Linguistics at his feet and all
that I know of the subject is entirely due to him. I am also deeply beholden to the Professor for
his kind permission to dedicate this work to him. Professor for his kind permission to dedicate
this work to him. Professor S.K. Chatterji did me the favour of looking through the manuscript
before it went to the press; and he the many useful suggestions. Professor Jules Bloch wrote the
encouraging Foreword. Mahamahopadhyaya Dr. Ganganatha Jha and Professor BK. Acharya gave all
facilities and encouragement. Dr. Dhirendra Varma kindly saw most of the proofs with me and
several improvements in the arrangement of matter are due to his suggestions. Professor Amaranatha
Jha looked into the proof of the Foreword and Mr. Bhagwat Dayal corrected the first proof of the
introduction. Mr. Lalta Prasad Sukul collected three specimens of Modern Awadhi and Mr. Siddhanath
Choube helped me in the preparation of the statistics of the frequency of pronouns. Mr. Mata
Prasad Gupta translated two texts and Mr. Udai Narain Tewari prepared the index. Mr. Shiva Prasad
Singh prepared the sketch of the map. To all these kind friends my best thanks are due.

While in London in 1929-30, I received instruction and advice from Professors Daniel Jones and E.
W'. Scripture and from Mr. A. Lloyd James, Mr. Stephen Jones, Mr. N. B. Jopson and Dr. H. W.
Bailey. I am grateful to all these teachers. This work has been my companion for the last
seventeen years; I am not unaware of .its deficiencies. However, i dare submit it to the world of
linguists only in the hope that it will receive their kindness and indulgence.

Foreword

It is gratifying to see Linguistic science settle down and prosper once more in India, its birth
place. It is a well-known fact that grammar, which had been cultivated in Europe with a view to
fixing the best usage in each language, did not become a science, capable of universal acceptance
and application, until India revealed Sanskrit to the world. Not that Sanskrit was in itself a
sufficient revelation: Bopp, it is true, traced all the consequences of the relationship, more
than once recognized by others before him, between Sanskrit and the Indo-European languages of
Europe, and thus constituted the new science of Comparative Grammar. Earlier Rask had already
established the relationship between the Germanic languages and Greek, Latin, Lettic and Slavonic.

All the same, it was the revelation of Sanskrit that permitted the immense and rapid progress of
historical Linguistics. But in spite of the numerous instructive archaisms of Sanskrit and clear
gradation of sounds and the mechanism of forms in that language, how much less benefit should we
have derived from this discovery had we not had the wonderful analysis of these facts by the
Sanskrit Grammarians themselves, an analysis a knowledge of which was to lay the foundation not
only of comparative and historical grammar, but of a science of general and universal validity?
See a power full mind like Volney’s when in N95 it tackles the problem of the “Simplification of
Oriental languages” in a treatise (in recognition of which he was elected an honorary member of
the Asiatic Society of Bengal). He took up the subject again in his book on the ‘European alphabet
applied to Asiatic languages.’ There we witness his painful efforts to lay the foundation of
Phonetics. He discovers that a vowel, as distinguished from a mere glottal sound, is articulated
“in and by means of the cavities of the mouth and nose” and that a consonant is the contact of two
or several parts of the mouth, made perceptible to the ear by the muffled sound of its breaking
away.” What would he have said, if he had been told that two thousand years before his time these
problems had already been solved and thoroughly investigated, that for instance, consonants were
actually called contacts-sparsa? Without calling to mind all the subtleties of the Pratisakhyas,
all we need remember is the order of the Sanskrit alphabet, where the sounds are placed according
to the degree of aperture and the place and mode of articulation, in order to realize that indian
science supplied the one necessary basis for the constitution of that phonetic science that Volney
dreamed of though with still purely practical purposes. In any case it already provided us with
the model of a precise classification, enabling European linguists to understand much better the
evolution of languages, which was the object of their first researches.

This is not the place for a survey of this research work, but we can sketch the way in which
Europe, after having received Sanskrit grammar as a wonderful present from India, gave her back
historical Linguistics in exchange. T he first application of the method to Indian languages was
the "Essay on Pali” by Burnouf and Lassen (1826) in which the latter specified the circumstances
of the transition from Sanskrit to Middle Indian. Strangely enough, a roundabout way had to be
taken before we arrived at modern Aryan. According to the testimony of Beames himself, it was the
initiative of Bishop Caldwell in connection with Dravidian languages (1856) that suggested to his
mind the idea of turning to account his perfect fluency in four different languages and his fair
knowledge three others, to draw up a general survey of them. The study of the Indian branch of
Indo-European languages far-outdistanced as it was, thanks to Grimm, by the researches in the
Germanic family, was not then very much behind the study of Keltic, Slavonic and Latin.

Just as with Europe, it was then a general survey that opened the way, the study of particular
languages came only afterwards. In this respect Dravidian lost the lead, as Kittel’s grammar of
Canara was published only in the 20th century. In the Aryan domain, thanks once more to the help
of native grammarians, progress was not slow. As early as 1872 Trumpp’s Sindhi was published a
descriptive grammar with comparative illustrations; in 1880 Hoernle gave in one book the thorough
description of a modern dialect together with its comparative grammar. The method had now taken
root in India and was yielding good fruit when applied by Europeans.

But what the Europeans were able to do by adding to their reading knowledge the first-hand
practice of native languages, would not the Indians themselves do the same by grafting on their
intimate experience of local usage the newly revised method of which the Europeans showed them the
use? The Great Bhandarkar in his fine Wilson Lectures (1877) even before the publication of
Beames’ volume concerning the Verb, was the first to endeavour to show the development of
Indo-Aryan from Vedic down to the present-day languages.

After him perhaps for some time, at any rate, it was not so useful to treat this subject again as
to get a deeper insight into the principal languages. From this point of view the most important
Indian contribution is Professor Chatterji’s "Origin and Development of Bengali Language," a book
too well-known for me to characterize it and give it here the praise it deserves.

Here is now Dr. Saksena’s contribution. The language he describes is not so illustrious as Bengali
or Marathi. Awadhi is but one of the Eastern Hindi dialects; but let not our ignorance blind us to
its importance. . If we annex Bagheli to it, as Linguistic science bids us to do, Awadhi is the
language of a people numbering more than twenty millions and a half. This number is a little less
than that of these who use Polish, but definitely more than European Spanish or Dutch ; in India
it is almost as large as Telugu can boast of, and more than Marathi or Tamil ; still all these
languages are among the twenty most extensive in the world according to Prof. Tesniere’s
calculations. Moreover Awadhi glories in a fine literature, though not in the present generation,
as Dr. Saksena explains in this treatise. As is well-known the renowned Rama—charitamanasa of
Tulsi Das was written in an old form of this language. It may be added that this work bears a
date, which is extremely important to the philologist; and that some manuscripts are almost con-
temporary 'with the work. An earlier record still is the Padmtiwat of Muhammad Jaisi, a text which
besides its being dated has the advantage of avoiding Sanskritisms; neither does it excessively
Islamize its diction. A language that possesses such masterpieces and that is able to resist
victoriously the encroachments of Hindustani in current usage was well worth studying for its own
sake.

But it prescribed to the historian a special difficulty which was to prevent him- fortunately to
my mind—from following the plan already used by other scholars for Marathi or Bengali.

The documents in Awadhi are not of the same kind in different periods: we have just seen that
there is no written Awadhi today. Now, the description of a spoken language entails special
problems and imposes duties of its own.

First of all, the scrupulous precise phonetic notation, which is not quite so necessary when the
spelling gives useful hints as regards its previous stages, now becomes indispensable if only to
avoid an unconscious imitation of neighbouring literary languages. But this phonetic accuracy
demands special training; here again Europe gave the clue, the teachings of grammar having been
elucidated there by the results of physiology and acoustics. Here the analylsi of sounds was
carried out with a precision far superior to the powers of hearing, thanks to the artificial
palate, which Oakley Coates had borrowed from the dentists (1871) and to the sound-registering
instruments borrowed by Bosapelly (l876) from the physiologists who had more or less adopted them
from the 18th-century meteorologists.

To master these methods, Dr. Saksena undertook a visit to Europe and devoted himself to a course
of tedious laboratory work. The results of this can be seen in the photographs illustrating this
book. This is the first time that the historical treatment of an Indian language has been
supported by a description carried out according to the graphic method. It is desirable that
particularly in this point Dr. Saksena should End followers, and that the Universities in India
might other facilities to their members for a voyage to Europe to enable them to work on these
lines.

The description, specially the graphic description, of an unwritten living language, cannot be
made in a general way; the whole study must be based on a particular speech, if not on an
individual speaker. Dr. Saksena started from his own dialect, which was the right thing to do. His
former, study of Lakhimpuri, which he had done under Professor Turner’s guidance was already
conspicuous by qualities of order and precision and contained important remarks. Later on, thanks
to the consent of the Allahabad University, to whom we should all be grateful for this, he was
able to explore the other dialects and prepare the still unpublished monographs which served as a
basis for the present work. He thus prepared himself for the use of the geographical method, which
is one of the most recent achievements of European Linguistics.

The main originality of Dr. Saksena’s work lies in the accurate and complete description of both
the ancient and modern stages of Awadhi. The historical explanations have been assigned a
subordinate position, and rightly so, as the connection of Awadhi with Indo—A1•yan in general
renders useless the repetition of theories which have already been propounded in the well-known
and authoritative works on the subject. In a few places Dr. Saksena has left a few facts
unexplained which, in the present stage of our knowledge, are impossible to be tackled. Dr.
Saksena has, in such cases, shown the facts and stated the problems connected with them in a clear
light. This in itself constitutes great progress.

Dr. Saksena, in the following pages, gives evidence of a close, varied and comprehensive study of
his own language and of promise of studies on parallel lines. It is with great pleasure that I
underline the merits and novelty of the great work which Dr. Saksena has produced.

About the Book:

Awadhi is an Eastern Hindi dialect comprising masterpieces, as the Ramayana of Tulsi Das, the
Padmawat of Muhammad Jaisi. A dialect wherein such renowned works are written is well worth
studying in all its details.

The present work on the evolution of Awadhi is divided into two parts bound in a single volume.
Part I, comprising nine chapters, relates to the precise description of phonetic notation of
Awadhi and is followed by graphic illustrations: Inscriptions from Kymograph Machine, Palatograms,
Drawings of the plate and charts. Part II, divided into ten chapters, deals with the accurate and
complete descriptions of the ancient and modern stages of Awadhi. It describes the eight parts of
speech, the syntatical order of the sentence in Awadhi and is followed by two appendices
comprising the speciments of Early and Modern Awadhi texts.

The book contains an exhaustive introduction in ten sections and a comprehensive index in two
parts. Part I contains Skt, Pkt, Persian and Early Awadhi words and Part II Modern Awadhi and
Hindustani words.

CONTENTS

Preface

Foreword

Map

INTRODUCTION

Section

Name of the language

Linguistic boundaries of Awadhi

Characteristics of Awadhi

Origin of Awadhi

Importance of Awadhi

Materials for the study of Awadhi

Dialects of Awadhi

Formation of Awadhi

Vocabulary of Awadhi

Orthography of Awadhi

Part I

AWADHI PHONETICS

CHAPTER IINDIVIDUAL SOUNDS

CHAPTER II
VOWEL COMBINATIONS

Sections

In Early Awadhi

In Modern Awadhi

Origin

CHAPTER III

129 - 31. The Syllable

CHAPTER IV

132 - 35. The Word

CHAPTER V

137 - 38. The Accent

CHAPTER VI

139 - 56. Assimilation

CHAPTER VII

157 - 58. The Sentence

CHAPTER VIII

159 - 61. The Intonation

CHAPTER IX

162 - 64. Other Characteristics

GRAPHIC ILLUSTRATIONS

Inscriptions from Kymograph Machine
Palatograms
Drawings of the palate
Charts

Part II

HISTORICAL GRAMMAR OF AWADHI
CHAPTER I
NOUNS

Section
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp165. Stem in Early Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp166. Stem in Modern Awadhi
167- 69. Forms of the Stem
170- 74. Gender
175- 76. Number
177- 86. Origin: Stem, Gender and Number
187- 89. Case in Early Awadhi
190- 91. Terminations of Cases in Early Awadhi
192- 96. Cases in Modern Awadhi
197- 98. Terminations of Cases in Modern Awadhi
199-202. Cases other than Direct and Oblique in Modern Awadhi
203- 15. Origin of Cases

CHAPTER IIADJECTIVES

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp216. General Observations
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp217. Gender and Number in Early Awadhi
218-21. Gender and Number in Modern Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp223. Stem in Early Awadhi
223-24. Stem in Modern Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp225. Degrees of Comparison
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp226. Origin.

267-70. Introductory
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp271. Accusative-Dative in Early Awadhi
272-74. Accusative-Dative in Modern Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp275. Genitive in Early Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp276. Genitive in Modern Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp277. Origin of Accusative-Dative-Genitive
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp278. Instrumental-Ablative in Early Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp279. Instrumental-Ablative in Modern Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp280. Origin
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp281. Locative in Early Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp282. Locative in Modern Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp283. Origin
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp284. Other Postpositions - Use
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp285. Other Postpositions in Early Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp286. Other Postpositions in Modern Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp287. Origin

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp357. General Observations
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp358. Adverbs of Time in Early Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp358. Adverbs of Time in Modern Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp359. Adverbs of Time in Early Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp360. Origin
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp361. Adverbs of Place in Early Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp362. Adverbs of Place in Modern Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp363. Origin
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp364. Adverbs of Manner in Early Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp365. Adverbs of Manner in Modern Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp366. Origin
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp367. Miscellaneous Adverbs in Early Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp368. Miscellaneous Adverbs in Modern Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp369. Comparison of Adverbs
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp370. Origin

CHAPTER VIIICONJUNCTIONS

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp371. In Early Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp372. In Modern Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp373. Origin

This work is based upon a Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Letters of the University
of Allahabad in 1931 and approved by a Board of Examiners comprising of Sir George A. Grierson,
Professors R. L. Turner, Jules Bloch, S. K. Chatterji and Dr. A. C. Woolner. It was hoped that the
University of Allahabad would publish it but owing to financial stringency the then
Vice-Chancellor, in spite of his wishes could not find funds for it. In the circumstances was kind
of The Indian Press, Ltd., to agree to print and publish it.

Tie main additions to the thesis are (a) the origin of sounds in Part I, (b) the appendices giving
unpublished texts of Early and Modern Awadhi, (c) the index of words, and (d) the map. I hope
these will prove useful. The transliteration alphabet of the international Phonetic Association
has been adopted for transcribing such modern languages as I know intimately and that of the Royal
Asiatic Society for the rest. The current abbreviations found in works of Linguistics have been
used in this book also.

It remains for me now to acknowledge my gratitude to those who helped me in the preparation of
this work. My revered gum 0Professor R. L. Turner planned this work for me in 1921 at Benares and
supervised its completion. I received my first and last lessons in Linguistics at his feet and all
that I know of the subject is entirely due to him. I am also deeply beholden to the Professor for
his kind permission to dedicate this work to him. Professor for his kind permission to dedicate
this work to him. Professor S.K. Chatterji did me the favour of looking through the manuscript
before it went to the press; and he the many useful suggestions. Professor Jules Bloch wrote the
encouraging Foreword. Mahamahopadhyaya Dr. Ganganatha Jha and Professor BK. Acharya gave all
facilities and encouragement. Dr. Dhirendra Varma kindly saw most of the proofs with me and
several improvements in the arrangement of matter are due to his suggestions. Professor Amaranatha
Jha looked into the proof of the Foreword and Mr. Bhagwat Dayal corrected the first proof of the
introduction. Mr. Lalta Prasad Sukul collected three specimens of Modern Awadhi and Mr. Siddhanath
Choube helped me in the preparation of the statistics of the frequency of pronouns. Mr. Mata
Prasad Gupta translated two texts and Mr. Udai Narain Tewari prepared the index. Mr. Shiva Prasad
Singh prepared the sketch of the map. To all these kind friends my best thanks are due.

While in London in 1929-30, I received instruction and advice from Professors Daniel Jones and E.
W'. Scripture and from Mr. A. Lloyd James, Mr. Stephen Jones, Mr. N. B. Jopson and Dr. H. W.
Bailey. I am grateful to all these teachers. This work has been my companion for the last
seventeen years; I am not unaware of .its deficiencies. However, i dare submit it to the world of
linguists only in the hope that it will receive their kindness and indulgence.

Foreword

It is gratifying to see Linguistic science settle down and prosper once more in India, its birth
place. It is a well-known fact that grammar, which had been cultivated in Europe with a view to
fixing the best usage in each language, did not become a science, capable of universal acceptance
and application, until India revealed Sanskrit to the world. Not that Sanskrit was in itself a
sufficient revelation: Bopp, it is true, traced all the consequences of the relationship, more
than once recognized by others before him, between Sanskrit and the Indo-European languages of
Europe, and thus constituted the new science of Comparative Grammar. Earlier Rask had already
established the relationship between the Germanic languages and Greek, Latin, Lettic and Slavonic.

All the same, it was the revelation of Sanskrit that permitted the immense and rapid progress of
historical Linguistics. But in spite of the numerous instructive archaisms of Sanskrit and clear
gradation of sounds and the mechanism of forms in that language, how much less benefit should we
have derived from this discovery had we not had the wonderful analysis of these facts by the
Sanskrit Grammarians themselves, an analysis a knowledge of which was to lay the foundation not
only of comparative and historical grammar, but of a science of general and universal validity?
See a power full mind like Volney’s when in N95 it tackles the problem of the “Simplification of
Oriental languages” in a treatise (in recognition of which he was elected an honorary member of
the Asiatic Society of Bengal). He took up the subject again in his book on the ‘European alphabet
applied to Asiatic languages.’ There we witness his painful efforts to lay the foundation of
Phonetics. He discovers that a vowel, as distinguished from a mere glottal sound, is articulated
“in and by means of the cavities of the mouth and nose” and that a consonant is the contact of two
or several parts of the mouth, made perceptible to the ear by the muffled sound of its breaking
away.” What would he have said, if he had been told that two thousand years before his time these
problems had already been solved and thoroughly investigated, that for instance, consonants were
actually called contacts-sparsa? Without calling to mind all the subtleties of the Pratisakhyas,
all we need remember is the order of the Sanskrit alphabet, where the sounds are placed according
to the degree of aperture and the place and mode of articulation, in order to realize that indian
science supplied the one necessary basis for the constitution of that phonetic science that Volney
dreamed of though with still purely practical purposes. In any case it already provided us with
the model of a precise classification, enabling European linguists to understand much better the
evolution of languages, which was the object of their first researches.

This is not the place for a survey of this research work, but we can sketch the way in which
Europe, after having received Sanskrit grammar as a wonderful present from India, gave her back
historical Linguistics in exchange. T he first application of the method to Indian languages was
the "Essay on Pali” by Burnouf and Lassen (1826) in which the latter specified the circumstances
of the transition from Sanskrit to Middle Indian. Strangely enough, a roundabout way had to be
taken before we arrived at modern Aryan. According to the testimony of Beames himself, it was the
initiative of Bishop Caldwell in connection with Dravidian languages (1856) that suggested to his
mind the idea of turning to account his perfect fluency in four different languages and his fair
knowledge three others, to draw up a general survey of them. The study of the Indian branch of
Indo-European languages far-outdistanced as it was, thanks to Grimm, by the researches in the
Germanic family, was not then very much behind the study of Keltic, Slavonic and Latin.

Just as with Europe, it was then a general survey that opened the way, the study of particular
languages came only afterwards. In this respect Dravidian lost the lead, as Kittel’s grammar of
Canara was published only in the 20th century. In the Aryan domain, thanks once more to the help
of native grammarians, progress was not slow. As early as 1872 Trumpp’s Sindhi was published a
descriptive grammar with comparative illustrations; in 1880 Hoernle gave in one book the thorough
description of a modern dialect together with its comparative grammar. The method had now taken
root in India and was yielding good fruit when applied by Europeans.

But what the Europeans were able to do by adding to their reading knowledge the first-hand
practice of native languages, would not the Indians themselves do the same by grafting on their
intimate experience of local usage the newly revised method of which the Europeans showed them the
use? The Great Bhandarkar in his fine Wilson Lectures (1877) even before the publication of
Beames’ volume concerning the Verb, was the first to endeavour to show the development of
Indo-Aryan from Vedic down to the present-day languages.

After him perhaps for some time, at any rate, it was not so useful to treat this subject again as
to get a deeper insight into the principal languages. From this point of view the most important
Indian contribution is Professor Chatterji’s "Origin and Development of Bengali Language," a book
too well-known for me to characterize it and give it here the praise it deserves.

Here is now Dr. Saksena’s contribution. The language he describes is not so illustrious as Bengali
or Marathi. Awadhi is but one of the Eastern Hindi dialects; but let not our ignorance blind us to
its importance. . If we annex Bagheli to it, as Linguistic science bids us to do, Awadhi is the
language of a people numbering more than twenty millions and a half. This number is a little less
than that of these who use Polish, but definitely more than European Spanish or Dutch ; in India
it is almost as large as Telugu can boast of, and more than Marathi or Tamil ; still all these
languages are among the twenty most extensive in the world according to Prof. Tesniere’s
calculations. Moreover Awadhi glories in a fine literature, though not in the present generation,
as Dr. Saksena explains in this treatise. As is well-known the renowned Rama—charitamanasa of
Tulsi Das was written in an old form of this language. It may be added that this work bears a
date, which is extremely important to the philologist; and that some manuscripts are almost con-
temporary 'with the work. An earlier record still is the Padmtiwat of Muhammad Jaisi, a text which
besides its being dated has the advantage of avoiding Sanskritisms; neither does it excessively
Islamize its diction. A language that possesses such masterpieces and that is able to resist
victoriously the encroachments of Hindustani in current usage was well worth studying for its own
sake.

But it prescribed to the historian a special difficulty which was to prevent him- fortunately to
my mind—from following the plan already used by other scholars for Marathi or Bengali.

The documents in Awadhi are not of the same kind in different periods: we have just seen that
there is no written Awadhi today. Now, the description of a spoken language entails special
problems and imposes duties of its own.

First of all, the scrupulous precise phonetic notation, which is not quite so necessary when the
spelling gives useful hints as regards its previous stages, now becomes indispensable if only to
avoid an unconscious imitation of neighbouring literary languages. But this phonetic accuracy
demands special training; here again Europe gave the clue, the teachings of grammar having been
elucidated there by the results of physiology and acoustics. Here the analylsi of sounds was
carried out with a precision far superior to the powers of hearing, thanks to the artificial
palate, which Oakley Coates had borrowed from the dentists (1871) and to the sound-registering
instruments borrowed by Bosapelly (l876) from the physiologists who had more or less adopted them
from the 18th-century meteorologists.

To master these methods, Dr. Saksena undertook a visit to Europe and devoted himself to a course
of tedious laboratory work. The results of this can be seen in the photographs illustrating this
book. This is the first time that the historical treatment of an Indian language has been
supported by a description carried out according to the graphic method. It is desirable that
particularly in this point Dr. Saksena should End followers, and that the Universities in India
might other facilities to their members for a voyage to Europe to enable them to work on these
lines.

The description, specially the graphic description, of an unwritten living language, cannot be
made in a general way; the whole study must be based on a particular speech, if not on an
individual speaker. Dr. Saksena started from his own dialect, which was the right thing to do. His
former, study of Lakhimpuri, which he had done under Professor Turner’s guidance was already
conspicuous by qualities of order and precision and contained important remarks. Later on, thanks
to the consent of the Allahabad University, to whom we should all be grateful for this, he was
able to explore the other dialects and prepare the still unpublished monographs which served as a
basis for the present work. He thus prepared himself for the use of the geographical method, which
is one of the most recent achievements of European Linguistics.

The main originality of Dr. Saksena’s work lies in the accurate and complete description of both
the ancient and modern stages of Awadhi. The historical explanations have been assigned a
subordinate position, and rightly so, as the connection of Awadhi with Indo—A1•yan in general
renders useless the repetition of theories which have already been propounded in the well-known
and authoritative works on the subject. In a few places Dr. Saksena has left a few facts
unexplained which, in the present stage of our knowledge, are impossible to be tackled. Dr.
Saksena has, in such cases, shown the facts and stated the problems connected with them in a clear
light. This in itself constitutes great progress.

Dr. Saksena, in the following pages, gives evidence of a close, varied and comprehensive study of
his own language and of promise of studies on parallel lines. It is with great pleasure that I
underline the merits and novelty of the great work which Dr. Saksena has produced.

About the Book:

Awadhi is an Eastern Hindi dialect comprising masterpieces, as the Ramayana of Tulsi Das, the
Padmawat of Muhammad Jaisi. A dialect wherein such renowned works are written is well worth
studying in all its details.

The present work on the evolution of Awadhi is divided into two parts bound in a single volume.
Part I, comprising nine chapters, relates to the precise description of phonetic notation of
Awadhi and is followed by graphic illustrations: Inscriptions from Kymograph Machine, Palatograms,
Drawings of the plate and charts. Part II, divided into ten chapters, deals with the accurate and
complete descriptions of the ancient and modern stages of Awadhi. It describes the eight parts of
speech, the syntatical order of the sentence in Awadhi and is followed by two appendices
comprising the speciments of Early and Modern Awadhi texts.

The book contains an exhaustive introduction in ten sections and a comprehensive index in two
parts. Part I contains Skt, Pkt, Persian and Early Awadhi words and Part II Modern Awadhi and
Hindustani words.

CONTENTS

Preface

Foreword

Map

INTRODUCTION

Section

Name of the language

Linguistic boundaries of Awadhi

Characteristics of Awadhi

Origin of Awadhi

Importance of Awadhi

Materials for the study of Awadhi

Dialects of Awadhi

Formation of Awadhi

Vocabulary of Awadhi

Orthography of Awadhi

Part I

AWADHI PHONETICS

CHAPTER IINDIVIDUAL SOUNDS

CHAPTER II
VOWEL COMBINATIONS

Sections

In Early Awadhi

In Modern Awadhi

Origin

CHAPTER III

129 - 31. The Syllable

CHAPTER IV

132 - 35. The Word

CHAPTER V

137 - 38. The Accent

CHAPTER VI

139 - 56. Assimilation

CHAPTER VII

157 - 58. The Sentence

CHAPTER VIII

159 - 61. The Intonation

CHAPTER IX

162 - 64. Other Characteristics

GRAPHIC ILLUSTRATIONS

Inscriptions from Kymograph Machine
Palatograms
Drawings of the palate
Charts

Part II

HISTORICAL GRAMMAR OF AWADHI
CHAPTER I
NOUNS

Section
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp165. Stem in Early Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp166. Stem in Modern Awadhi
167- 69. Forms of the Stem
170- 74. Gender
175- 76. Number
177- 86. Origin: Stem, Gender and Number
187- 89. Case in Early Awadhi
190- 91. Terminations of Cases in Early Awadhi
192- 96. Cases in Modern Awadhi
197- 98. Terminations of Cases in Modern Awadhi
199-202. Cases other than Direct and Oblique in Modern Awadhi
203- 15. Origin of Cases

CHAPTER IIADJECTIVES

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp216. General Observations
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp217. Gender and Number in Early Awadhi
218-21. Gender and Number in Modern Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp223. Stem in Early Awadhi
223-24. Stem in Modern Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp225. Degrees of Comparison
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp226. Origin.

267-70. Introductory
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp271. Accusative-Dative in Early Awadhi
272-74. Accusative-Dative in Modern Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp275. Genitive in Early Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp276. Genitive in Modern Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp277. Origin of Accusative-Dative-Genitive
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp278. Instrumental-Ablative in Early Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp279. Instrumental-Ablative in Modern Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp280. Origin
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp281. Locative in Early Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp282. Locative in Modern Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp283. Origin
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp284. Other Postpositions - Use
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp285. Other Postpositions in Early Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp286. Other Postpositions in Modern Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp287. Origin

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp357. General Observations
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp358. Adverbs of Time in Early Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp358. Adverbs of Time in Modern Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp359. Adverbs of Time in Early Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp360. Origin
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp361. Adverbs of Place in Early Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp362. Adverbs of Place in Modern Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp363. Origin
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp364. Adverbs of Manner in Early Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp365. Adverbs of Manner in Modern Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp366. Origin
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp367. Miscellaneous Adverbs in Early Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp368. Miscellaneous Adverbs in Modern Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp369. Comparison of Adverbs
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp370. Origin

CHAPTER VIIICONJUNCTIONS

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp371. In Early Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp372. In Modern Awadhi
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp373. Origin

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